How to render pdfs using C#

Question

I want to load and draw pdf files graphically using C#. I don't need to edit them or anything, just render them at a given zoom level.

The pdf libraries I have found seem to be focussed on generation. How do I do this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Google has open sourced its excellent PDF rendering engine - PDFium - that it wrote with Foxit Software.

There is a C# nuget package called PdfiumViewer which gives a C# wrapper around PDFium and allows PDFs to be displayed and printed.

I have used it and was very impressed with the quality of the rendering.

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PDFium works directly with streams so it doesn't require any data to be written to disk.

This is my example from a WinForms app

    public void LoadPdf(byte[] pdfBytes)
    {
        var stream = new MemoryStream(pdfBytes);
        LoadPdf(stream)
    }

    public void LoadPdf(Stream stream)
    {
        // Create PDF Document
        var pdfDocument = PdfDocument.Load(stream);

        // Load PDF Document into WinForms Control
        pdfRenderer.Load(pdfDocument);
    }

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Edit: To get the pdfRenderer control in WinForm: Add the PdfiumViewer NuGet package to the project; open the projects packages folder in Windows Explorer and drag the PdfiumViewer.dll file onto the Toolbox window; A control called PdfRenderer will be available to add: